


we might just end up lonely after all

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 08:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: A chance meeting, ten years too early.(The second hand starts to tick.)





	we might just end up lonely after all

“Do you like that book?”

A question from an unfamiliar voice, asked eager and soft.

He considered, glancing down at the pictures sparkling up iridescent from the page, at the words printed across them bold and black. He supposed they were pretty enough, supposed the story the words wove was enchanting in its fancy.

“Not really,” was what he settled on. It was just another fairytale about things that would never come true. It was the one he read most often, though, so he figured that had to mean something- but it was too late to take the words back.

The girl didn’t seem bothered by them, though. She flopped down beside him, the flowing edges of her skirt falling over the book in his lap. He brushed it off without a second thought, but that too the girl didn’t seem to mind. “Well I like it. My brother reads it to me every night. It’s my favorite.”

“I… see.”

He didn’t know what the girl wanted, and she was clearly waiting for something with no intention of asking. He flipped the page and went back to reading. He didn’t like this part, much- the middle of the story, where the pink angel and the yellow angel arrived and declared themselves Blue Angel’s friends without so much as a proper greeting beforehand. It wasn’t very realistic. Perhaps storybook angels could live that way, but people were infinitely more complicated. He was only six years old, but he knew that, knew it keenly. There were plenty of things like that he already understood, but no one ever seemed to want to hear it.

At his side the girl fidgeted, craning her neck to see all the pictures printed across the pages. He didn’t move the book. If she wanted to read it, then there was another one on the shelf inside, all dirty and worn. This one was new, with pages still pristine and barely any dirt on the back cover, and it was _his_.

Finally, after three whole pages of shuffling, the girl asked- “Read it to me?”

He shut the book with a pleasing snap of the spine and shoved it at her. “It’s fine if you just read it yourself.”

The girl made a face, all puffed, pouty cheeks and stubborn set of her eyes. He’d seen that expression on the people around him a hundred times over, but never directed his way. The only looks he received were patronizing and wary, and in the face of this abnormality, he froze.

“There’s still some hard words,” was what the girl said, eyes pleading and bright in the opportunity he’d given away. He considered. It didn’t seem that she was willing to relent, not liable to go off and join the rest of the children as they raced in groups around the yard, playing a game whose rules he found simplistic and inane. “Please?”

For a long while he didn’t know what to do. This was an unfamiliar situation- he’d never had anyone insist on relying on him, before. The girl repeated herself- _please_ \- a second time. There was simply nothing else for him to do; he sighed and opened the book. “Long, long ago…”

(And, with this strange girl nestled into his side to see the pictures shimmering in the light filtering down through the leaves of the orphanage tree, Spectre read aloud the story of Blue Angel and her mysterious tears.)

When the story was over and book shut carefully, the girl didn’t cry. He didn’t know why he expected her to. Unlike many of the children here, who burst into tears over so much as a scraped knee, his first impression of her wasn’t one of a crybaby.

“What’s your name?” asked the girl, finally pushing away from his side. The warmth of her lingered there, almost uncomfortable in the encroaching press of humidity.

“What’s _your_ name,” he asked, feeling oddly put on the defensive. No stranger should know more about him than he knows about them- that’s the way it always was, and he wouldn’t let one unfamiliar girl change that.

“Aoi,” she answered. It was a nice name, he supposed, pretty enough. A flash- then it made sense.

“Oh. Like the angel.”

“No.” Aoi shook her head, sending her pigtails fluttering over her shoulders, then pointed at something just behind him. A butterfly lifted from the hollyhock as he turned his head, disturbed by the suddenness of the movement. “Like the flowers.”

* * *

Akira had no choice but to move them out of Den City for the summer. It was the last thing he wanted to do- not only did it risk the connections he’d spent months trying to forge, both legitimate and underworld, but it was only going to stress Aoi more.

And yet there was only so much he could do. A drawn-out call from the insurance agency a week prior revealed that they’d finally caught on to someone siphoning money out of the account their parents left for Akira once he came of age, and there was only so much more he could pull before the authorities put two and two together and realized that the culprit was _him_. For at least the next few months, they’d have to go without.

There were other things he could do- that he _was_ doing, working himself to the bone on weekends and nights after school. But he could only make so much. Even jobs from the underworld that made his heart leap with relief and trepidation in turn could only come so often.

Akira paced up and down the hall as Aoi napped away the draining summer heat, thinking himself in circles. _The rent in Den City is high, even for the small place we’re in now. We won’t make it through the summer, at this rate._ _I should have skipped more school. I should have quit school altogether._

He shook away those nagging thoughts. There was no future in them- a high school dropout was hardly going to be able to support himself, let alone put his sister through school in the long run. Akira stopped before the door and stared at the peeling paint of the frame. _There’s no other choice._

So they placed their possessions into backpacks, clutched tickets tight in their free hands, and caught the cheapest bus Akira could find them into the furthest reaches of the suburbs. Akira watched the buildings roll out from the lively press of Den City to the orderly sprawl of the suburbs. As the mountains lurking low in the skyline grew from a distant shape to a looming hill before them, as Aoi napped quietly at his side, he thanked every benevolent force in the universe that hacking was a business practically built on working remotely.

The room he’d found for them wasn’t specious, or even particularly comfortable, but it was cheap. And, with a few tweaks to the security system, it was safe. It was almost all Akira could ask for. They settled into a routine faster than Akira would have dared hope for- drop off Aoi at the daycare, work the part time shifts he’d picked up for the week at various places around town, pick up Aoi outside the daycare gates, then take her home for dinner and work on things considerably less legal until he passed out sometime well after midnight.

And then came the day that Aoi wasn’t waiting for him. The apologies of the daycare staff meant nothing as he searched for her, rushing up and down the block with a panic he couldn’t contain- only to have a woman poke her head out from the orphanage at the end of the street, waving him over with a tentative but confused smile. “You… wouldn’t perhaps be looking for a young girl, would you? Looks to be about six or so, brown hair and pigtails?”

“That’s my sister,” he said almost breathless. The woman let out a long breath of relief, almost as strong as the one Akira felt.

“Oh, good,” she said, “She’s been showing up here every afternoon for a while now, and no one’s been able to figure out where she’s from, or where she goes when she leaves save Spectre, who won’t tell any of us.”

“Spectre?” Akira asked, and the woman only shook her head and ushered Akira into the backyard. Sure enough, Aoi and a young boy around her age were together beneath a tree, Aoi acting something out as the boy sat beside her.

“That would be the boy next to your sister.”

“Surely,” asked Akira, watching Aoi recite her way through the entirety of _Blue Angel_ as that strange boy looked on, utterly impassive, “His name isn’t really _Spectre?_ ”

The caretaker sighed, shook her head. Akira felt he’d inadvertently stumbled into some sort of longstanding grief. “No, not officially. He was brought here as an infant, so the staff decided on a name for him, but... “ Another sigh. “That name he chose is all he’ll respond to. Before your sister started playing with him, that name seemed like the only thing that made him happy.”

_Spectre_ \- it was a strange word for a child to know, and even stranger to choose as a name. Akira remembered its meaning faintly, probably from the lyrics of a song or a novel he’d read in the past. A ghost. Otherwise, a looming threat, a danger on the horizon. An omen of ill fortune, either way. But he was thinking too hard about it- children often latched onto things they didn’t understand, or that they only thought they did.

“Well. I’m sorry my sister imposed on you. The daycare didn’t tell me she was running off, or I would have come to pick her up much sooner.” He apologized with a bow, but the caretaker only shook her head.

“Oh no, not at all. Actually… If I can ask something a little selfish… He rarely speaks to anyone his own age, and… Well, I hate to say it, but… I think he may have given up on the staff here. One too many gentle lies.” She said helplessly, it as if Akira was supposed to relate. He supposed, counting up all the half-truths he’d told over the past year, that he could.

“And you’d like Aoi to come and visit?”

“Think of it like a daycare service,” she said, “for a much lower price.”

It seemed almost rude to refuse given the story, and while he’d never explain in full the circumstances that resulted in him bringing Aoi out of the city, their slowly building supply of funds could stand the extra room.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing again. The caretaker met him with the same.

“No,” she said, “I really should be thanking you. Now, if you don’t mind discussing a few terms…”

And with a single evening's negotiations, Aoi came to spend many a summer day an outsider at the orphanage.  

* * *

Spectre turned to her one day, a strange glint in his eye. They’d known each other almost a month, and Aoi couldn’t say she’d ever seen him so excited. She’d seen him amused, and seen the devious look he got while plotting something, but never open with excitement like this. “Do you believe in magic?”

Aoi didn’t know how to answer that right away, so she thought for a while. Spectre didn’t care if their conversations had long silences, or if she just chattered away. That, she realized, might be why they could become friends, even when everyone else thought Spectre was weird.

There were lots of things Aoi had found out over the past year, some more important than others. That no matter how hard she pretended she’d never become the magical girls she watched on Sunday morning tv, that the presents from angels she’d received on her birthday had been bought with money from Akira’s wallet-

But that wasn’t the question Spectre was asking.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, and it pulled an expression from Spectre that wasn’t quite a smile. It was the expression he got when he realized that Aoi didn’t know a secret that he did, or when they started to play a game where only Spectre knew all the rules.

“It does,” he said, voice a whisper, “Let me prove it to you.”

“Okay,” Aoi replied without hesitation, and let Spectre pull her to her feet.

 

In the slope of the mountain, there lived a tree. The tree was an old thing- ancient, almost- and not so far up the mountain that two young children couldn’t make the climb, sharing snacks pilfered from the orphanage pantry while watchful eyes had been elsewhere. It was not on the main path; rather, it was just a few steps off, protected by a thicket of bushes and underbrush, hiding it from a child’s sight. But Spectre knew, and led Aoi with utter confidence to a place they wouldn’t be found by oblivious adults.

“Here,” said Spectre as they pushed into the clearing, “this is the tree that protected me.”

The tree was beautiful. Imposing but lovely, revered but kind. If the tree was a person, then Aoi thought it would be a grandmother. Aoi squinted up into its leaves, listening to the rustle of them in the breeze and feeling the patches of sunlight slip between them.

“Hello,” she said because it felt polite, then tried to sense whatever Spectre seemed so confident of. Aoi wondered just what it was that she should feel. When Spectre said magic, she’d imagined something like Blue Angel and the storybook, with wings and spells and all the things that weren’t supposed to exist in the real world. She wasn’t sure, but it struck her then that this couldn’t possibly be the same. Spectre called the tree his mother, so Aoi tried to remember her own. And she did try- but it started to hurt somewhere deep in her chest, so she stopped. No matter what, she didn’t want to cry. Not in front of Spectre.

“Nice to meet you,” she finished, lacking anything better to say. For an instant she felt something in the silent forest, like eyes on her, like the tree was about to say something back-

But it was just a tree.

No matter which way she looked at it, no matter how much Spectre insisted that it took care of him, it was never going to move for her.

Spectre beckoned to her from the hollow in its roots, where he’d crawled in sometime while she was spellbound by its branches. “Come here and you’ll understand.”

Aoi crouched down and stared into the hollow, peering into the dark of it and thinking that there was only space for one if Spectre stayed sprawled out on his stomach like that-

Spectre bolted up, reached out for her hand-

There was motion, there was dizzying sensation, the world melted away.

When Aoi woke, she was alone.

(She was along for a long, long time.)

* * *

Spectre wondered if Aoi was here. It was a passing thought, flitting in and out of his mind over the past sixty-some days. He remembered she’d mentioned knowing how to play Duel Monsters once or twice before, taught from a cobbled-together deck of her brother’s cards.

A pause of thought. Then, unpleasantly-

_That brother of hers must be worried._

Spectre frowned and pushed away his tray. He’d already eaten his fill anway. The drone hesitated a moment, as if waiting for him to finish, but Spectre just slipped the VR headset back over his eyes and ignored it as it left, gone back to whoever was waiting for it on the other side of the wall. It seemed like the AI opponents had been getting harder, lately, because he’d started to lose a few since the sixty-eighth time he’d woken up. That just meant he was better than their expectations. And that just proved he needed to _keep_ getting better.

The hands of time kept ticking on in that empty white room, and for the first time in his life, Spectre enjoyed counting the days. He honed his skills at the game- and with every duel he tried to be _flawless_. Because someone was counting on him. Someone knew that he could learn the rules in this room, and someone knew that eventually, he could stop losing completely. Every time he settled down to sleep without a single loss since waking he smiled. If those days could go on forever, if he could count the rest of his life with such enthusiasm, then Spectre would be satisfied.

After a while, he stopped thinking about Aoi at all.

* * *

Six months. Six months of sleepless nights, of pulling every string that he’d managed to drag into reach, of skipping more school than he’d attended to try and track down in the back alleys information the proper channels hadn’t been able to find.

After six months of hell, Aoi came home.

They met in the parking lot of the police station- the central headquarters of Den City. It was buzzing with activity in the late morning- mundane things, mostly- but Akira had his attention only on Aoi. She tried to run to him, but it turned into a stumble instead; Akira met her halfway and pulled her tight into his arms. She’d been given a shower, a change of ill-fitting clothes. It did nothing for the pallor of her face that hadn’t seen the sun in half a year and the terrible distance in her eyes. She said nothing, her arms were slow to wrap around him in turn.

Akira hugged her tight and thought, bitterly- _She’d just started to accept our parents, and now…_

He took her home. It was much nicer than anything they’d had before, though still nowhere near the estates of their respective youths. The universe had taken pity on him in the form of government money and an early release on their parent’s account- not that the latter hadn’t been anything he wasn’t taking from anyway, and not that the former had meant _anything_ in the face of not knowing whether Aoi would return or not.

He made Aoi a selection of all her favorite foods- or at least the ones he could from what was in their kitchen, and it was satisfying to see some of the life return to her as she ate. Slowly, at first, mechanical- then almost ravenous as she realized what he’d made. _What were they feeding you?_ He wondered, then quickly realized that he didn’t want to know.

He didn’t bother to do the dishes after they finished, just stacked them in the sink as Aoi returned to staring blankly at the table, as if she didn’t know what else she was supposed to do. Something in Akira trembled with a terrible anger he didn’t know he could feel.

He stood for a moment, hands clenched around the cold edges of the sink, and forced himself to take deep breaths. Then he pushed himself away and went to find a hairbrush, buying himself that last little bit of time to school his expression.

When he returned with it- when he called out Aoi’s name- she turned to track him. She didn’t answer when he asked if he could brush her hair save a tiny nod, the barest hint of acknowledgement. But it was something. And if it was something, then all Akira could do was cling to it.  

Her hair was hopelessly matted; she’d obviously given up on trying to brush it with her fingers sometime well into the six months of endlessness. After ten minutes with a brush and blank-eyed flinches as it caught on all the snags, Akira relented and cut it short. _Almost as short as mine_ , he said, and tried to get her to smile at a resemblance they didn’t share. Aoi reached up a hand, twirled the short strands at her neck around an idle finger.

“I want to see Spectre.”

Akira froze. Officially, no one knew who else was involved in the incident, but there was only so much his intelligence could be insulted. They’d disappeared together, returned on the very same day. A quick call to the orphanage with the news had confirmed that- two children, back in their proper places. He had the nagging certainty that they wouldn’t be so receptive to a second call. “Aoi, I don’t know if-”

“I want to see him.” Her words were soft, but perfectly certain. “He was there with me. I know it. So… I…”

Aoi looked away, but there was something in her eyes that Akira thought he understood. He was able to help Aoi through the loss of their parents because he, too, had experienced it. If that was what Aoi needed again, then he had no right to deny her. “Okay. We’ll go as soon as we can, okay?”

“Thank you,” Aoi said. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it reassuringly, then slipped into the other room to make a call.

The reception was as cold as he’d feared, a refusal not so much in blunt words as careful avoidances. “Well, we have to consider how this might affect the both of them…”

“Please,” Akira pleaded, because in this he wasn’t above bowing his head and begging. Not for Aoi’s sake- never for hers. “This is the first thing she’s said to me since she returned. _Please_.”

On the other end of the line, the caretaker took a long breath, crackling loud in his ear. “Fine. But only this once. We can’t afford anything else.”

* * *

Spectre looked different. That was the first thing that Aoi noticed about him, sitting in the shade of the trees in the corner of the yard. His hair and clothes were all the same, same as her memory of the person she’d first met at the start of last summer, but he was different. Maybe it was because he was older. She didn’t really know.

She sat down beside him anyway. For a little while neither of them spoke, but that wasn’t new. Plenty of times in the summer, too, they hadn’t spoken, just sat side by side and busied themselves with their own separate interests. Only this time did it finally feel lonely.

“You don’t look like her,” Spectre said suddenly, still not looking at her. But she turned her head to look at him, watching his eyes locked at a point somewhere in the middle distance. “You don’t look like her at all.”

For a moment Aoi didn’t know what he meant- Aoi was still Aoi, even after everything. But then she realized- in his lap was _Blue Angel_ . The cover was stained and the edges were bent out of shape, but it was the same _Blue Angel_ that he’d read to her dozens of times over. She asked- “Because my hair is short?”

Spectre didn’t reply.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” Aoi asked instead. She didn’t really want to- she’d lost track of how many times she was forced to tell the story, by now. She knew it was higher than she wanted to count, at least.

“I’m not allowed to.”

“Oh.” Aoi understood. There were a lot of things that she wasn’t allowed to do now, either. They sat again in silence for a while. Aoi fiddled with a fallen leaf, and eventually it crumbled down to nothing between her fingers but a gritty brown stain on her nails.

“It was fun.” The words were soft- the quietest of whispers, a secret meant only for her. Aoi glanced away, just for a moment- but Akira was sitting at the orphanage door faraway, and she already knew the other children wouldn’t come close.

_Fun_ \- she couldn’t say the same. She’d thought the summer month they’d spent together much more fun than six months of loneliness with only duels and the words of a story she’d long since memorized to break up the boredom. She’d missed her brother’s food, and his voice, and the way he always tried to make her smile even when she knew the only thing he felt was sad. She’d missed him. More than anything.

At her side Spectre continued, still spilling secrets- “I want to go back.”

She couldn’t let him. Aoi realized that, then. If she didn’t stop Spectre from going back now, then she’d never see him again. She couldn’t explain why she felt that way, why she was so crushingly sure of it. She just knew.

If she let Spectre go, then she’d lose him- the very first friend she’d made since her whole world had become just her and Akira. And she couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t. _Something fun,_ Aoi thought, _something even more fun than reading or talking or-_

The answer she found fell from her lips as she grasped Spectre’s hand, powerless to stop either of them. “Do you want to go to the tree?”

 

In the summer they’d had time to plan, to sneak around believing themselves quite clever and shrewd beyond their years. This time they just ran hand in hand and hoped they were fast enough not to be caught.

They weren’t, of course- Akira’s legs were long and the path that they tracked through the underbrush everything but subtle. He called out for them- called out for her, and in a few stumbling steps her shoulder was caught, dragging her to a stop. Spectre’s hand almost fell from hers as she jerked him back by the arm, but he caught his balance at the last second and turned to face Akira with a frown.

Aoi didn’t see that, though- she was caught in Akira’s gaze, rooted in place by the fear in them, wild and pure. She’d hurt him, disappearing without a word again. She shouldn’t have done it; she knew that. She knew it, but… “I’m sorry,” she said, and tried to convey her honesty with every careful syllable, “but we have to go to the tree. Spectre’s tree!”

Their hands were still linked; Aoi squeezed it tight and lifted them towards Akira, trying to make him see. Maybe Akira believed in magic, or maybe he didn’t. Aoi didn’t know the answer, but he read her the story of _Blue Angel_ and the spells of her courage until she could remember every word, even the ones she hadn’t been able to read. To Aoi, that _had_ to mean something.

Akira let out a long breath- partly to catch his breath, partly with relief. Aoi could tell by the way the tight lines of his face suddenly relaxed into the one most familiar to her, protective and kind. “Okay. But I’m coming with you. Can I do that?”

“...It’s fine,” Spectre muttered, and tugged Aoi towards the path that would lead them to the tree. The atmosphere was tense, as they climbed. The impulse to look over her shoulder struck Aoi again and again- but Akira was walking there, so she didn’t. If Akira was here, then nothing bad would happen to her. To Aoi that was just as much a truth as _the sky is blue_ or _mother and father are angels, now_.

They were about to push into the clearing when Spectre stopped. Aoi almost crashed into his back, but caught herself just in time. “Spectre? Wha-”

Spectre’s hand fell from hers. He took one step, shaky, then another- then another and another and another, running until he was stumbling to the base of the tree. Aoi followed with tentative steps. The tree- lovely and imposing with branches that curved soft towards the ground like the embrace of a grandmother- was gone. The crevice at the base of its roots was just a hole, now- and though it had looked so small, before, the hollow looked huge in its emptiness. The whole clearing looked too big, now.

With a hitch of his breath, Spectre’s shoulders began to tremble. Aoi didn’t know what to do- Spectre had never _cried_ before. For a thought she stood behind him, unable to do a thing- then, remembering what Akira had always done for her, she reached out a slow hand, brushing it against his shoulder.

It was hardly there a moment before Spectre turned with surprising speed to slap it away. He spat- “You wouldn’t understand. That’s what you were going to say, right? But you don’t. Someone like you would _never_ understand.”

Aoi stepped back, clutching her hand tight before her chest. But it wasn’t from the sting of the slap. Akira ran to her with a cry and wrapped her up in a hug, doubtless thinking that Spectre had hurt her. But he hadn’t, she wanted to reassure. He hadn’t. She’d hardly felt a thing, really-

But all she could do was stare at Spectre over Akira’s shoulder, showing them his tears with eyes stripped bare of every pretense he’d ever put on. He turned back what remained of his tree silent, still crying from the depths of a pain that Aoi knew that she never wanted to feel.

They stayed that way for a long time, the three of them- Spectre crying soft at the loss of his mother, Akira holding Aoi close to try and shelter her from all the pains she’d already felt, and Aoi looking on with hands clasped together in the absence of everything that had slipped from her grasp.

* * *

Zaizen Aoi would never understand. Spectre was seven years old, his arbitrarily decided birthday having come and gone sometime during those happy six months. They didn’t speak, after Akira returned them to the orphanage at dusk, not even to say goodbye. Neither of them wanted to talk anymore regardless. That night her brother whisked her away, back to the city where she belonged- and Spectre ran fast into the woods with a backpack full of snacks stolen from the pantry and a lighter from a locked drawer.

Just as everyone else whose kindness had failed him, she too would fade back into nothing. Just like the lie she told the first time they met-

She didn’t need him. She never did. All she’d done was pretend and gone off and called it friendship.

But the boy who found him huddled at the fireside, who stretched out a warm hand to ward of the chill of the first spring rains-

Revolver needed him, and Spectre would honor that one, true thing with his life.

* * *

At the tender age of six, teetering ever closer to the brink of seven, Aoi stopped in front of a card shop. A sign hung in its window, and Aoi understood it well enough- ‘ _Closing sale’_. She’d heard talk of this, at school- now that LINK VRAINS was officially open, it marked the death knell of the physical Duel Monsters cards.

“Aoi?” asked Akira, tugged back by her hand in his.

“It’s nothing,” she said, and trotted a few quick steps to be even with him again. She was sure he noticed what caught her attention, but didn’t know at all what he thought about it. Still, the passing thought rattled around her mind a while- _LINK VRAINS_. _What kind of people enjoy dueling, there?_

 

She didn’t join the duel club until her second year of middle school- the year after Akira was promoted to Security Chief; a stunning achievement for a man so young- and who’d never even officially graduated college, at that.

When she told him, Akira was surprised to say the least. Aoi understood why. Theoretically it should have been traumatic, should have dredged up the memories of the worst years of her life, all threaded together and impossible to shake. And yet she’d gone and joined anyway- she was even thinking about heading into LINK VRAINS, given a little bit of thought to her avatar already.

That wasn’t to say it didn’t dredge up the darkness- but she was going to wake shaking from phantom shocks in the dead of night, bracing herself for the impact of her back into a wall that wouldn’t arrive _anyway_ . Mother and father would still be angels in the sky no matter how much she wallowed in her misery. But those six months of white- those, at least, she could start to change into something soft, something sweet. Something more like _hope._

(When Akira finally did ask why, she thought for a moment, then replied simply- “Because it’s fun.”)

**Author's Note:**

> Title paraphrased from PinocchioP's "nobody makes sense".   
> This was inspired by the fact that Spectre says an expression in episode 35 that translates very literally to Blue Angel being "ten years too early" to save him. It doesn't literally /mean/ that of course, (and is more a subtle nod to what Spectre is about to tell Playmaker about his past than anything) but I just had to explore that possibility (though in the end it changed remarkably little lol).


End file.
